On
her Unguarded CD from 1985, Amy Grant
recorded a song that says, “You gotta know who to and not to listen to.” These
lyrics pretty much sum of the theme of Steven Furtick’s book, Crashing the Chatterbox.
The
book’s subtitle, “Hearing God’s Voice Above All Others,” is what intrigued me,
but this book does not contain a list of the top ten ways to be able to better hear from God. It
is more of a discussion on how to know which voice in your head to listen to,
and how to recognize and listen to the voice of God rather than the voice of the enemy, or the
“chatterbox.” Or as the Amy Grant song says, “who to and not to listen to.”
Are you familiar with the tricks of the chatterbox? Do
you battle a constant barrage of destructive, self-condemning, accusing,
hope-crushing, fear-inducing, faith-shattering chatter? I know that I do, and
from this book, it seems that the author does as well.
Throughout
the book, Furtick is very transparent about the struggles in his own life and
the chatter that goes on inside his own head. He acknowledges that sometimes
the condemning, discouraging voice of the enemy sounds so loud that it can be
difficult to hear anything or anyone else, and he makes this observation about
the differences in volume:
“If God wants us to hear and know and obey His
voice, why does He whisper? I don’t know all the reasons, because God has never
consulted me in His methods of communication. But here’s how I’ve come to
understand it. He whispers because He’s close. The enemy has to shout his
threats because, although he can distract and disarm you, he knows he
ultimately can’t destroy you. He can’t get to you…He can only forecast fear
into your future” (pp. 106-107).
He
addresses a number of the enemy’s tactics, including his propensity for attacking us with unfounded fear and lies. Because of this, we must be able to
distinguish between these lies and the truth of God. Similar to a bank teller’s
training on recognizing counterfeit bills, “…maturity in Christ is largely
about becoming familiar enough with what is true to see through what’s false” (pg.
128).
Near
the end of the book, Furtick delivers the news that we must have a strategy to
tune out the chatterbox because the chatterbox is not going to go away on its
on. There is no secret way to completely crash the chatterbox so that it will
cease talking to us. As long as we continue to follow Jesus, we will never
reach a point in our lives when the enemy is going to give up and move on. Furtick
says, “…the chatter will keep coming. Every day of our lives for the rest of
our lives…The more you grow in Christ and the closer you get to fulfilling the
things He put you on the earth to do, the more intense the battle with your
chatter becomes” (pg. 157).
While
this sounds like bad news, we don’t have to listen to the chatterbox if we
focus on listening to God. I think the bottom line of this book is that “Every
Christian has a calling. And the chatterbox is assigned to interrupt that
calling. The ability to overcome discouragement is driven by our intentional
decision to reassure ourselves: God says I can” (pg. 171). So who’s voice are
you going to listen to?
I received this book from "Blogging for Books" for this review.
